Alberta man brings affordable Wi-Fi to Maskwacis reserve

Bruce Buffalo built two rooftop internet hotspots so the residents of his small rural Alberta town can afford to stay connected.

"I just figured it would be useful to create a hotspotso people could use their phones," the Maskwacis, Alta. resident said in an interview Monday.

Setting up the wireless hotspotwasn't easy. Buffalo configured the public networks with a couple of radios, antennas, external cables and a computer.

His hope is to make internet affordable for allof the 7,582 residents in the four Cree Nation reserves in the Maskwacis region. So far, he has installed two rooftop antennasin his neighbourhood, providing service for anyone passing within a 600-metre radius.

The locationof the hotspots will depend on which residents will volunteer their roofs, Buffalo said.

Connectivity is available through three different internet service providers, but Buffalo said low-income families in the region cannot afford it.

"There's really nothing available," Buffalo said Tuesday. "If people can't pay for it, they really won't have access and [cellular] data is just too expensive."

The hotspots are owned, operated and run by Buffalo, He had been paying for the internet service out of pocket, with the help of some donations.

Buffalo wasn't raising enough funds online until hewas featured in adocumentary. Since then, he said he has received enough moneyto service the town's two public hotspots for a full year, and is now considering creating two more.

Limited ways to connect

The two affordable options for Maskwacis residents to connect to the internet is through wireless networks or cellular data plans, Buffalo said.

Maskwacis residents generally receive cell phone plans through prepaid phones costing individuals $50 per month, which he said is not affordable for most users in his community.

Even for those that can afford cellular service, Buffalo said it's "spotty at best" in Maskwacis, so more public internet hotspots would help residentsgo about their day-to-day lives.

"You can walk around, feel safe," he said. "You can't do things easily without service."

Internet speeds not close to Canadian cities

In Alberta, individuals are allowed to create their own internet hotspots if they know the technology -- but most get service from established internet providers.

Three internet service providers reach into Maskwacis: Xplornet, CCI Wireless and Arrow Technology Limited. According to Buffalo, the price of connecting to the internet in his community starts at $100 a month, a figure too high for the reserve's low-income families.

A spokesperson for FirstNations-owned Arrow Technology Limited said the company provides internet service to only one part of the community because the cost of building a tower in the area was too expensive.

The company supplies internet to households for $65 a month and does not bill for overages, according to their website.

In December 2016, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), declared broadbandInterneta basic service for allcommunities and said the country's internetproviders needto improveaccess in rural communities.

At the time, the commission set the goal ofconnecting90 per cent of all homes and small businesses in the country by 2021with unlimited data services intheir homes, community buildings, and on the roads.

Standard internetspeeds are50mbpswhen downloading online, and10mbpsto upload files.

CCI Wireless spokesmanGraham Fleet said the provideroffers wireless and wired connections to residents of the Maskwacis, but is moving away from fibre technology to meet the goals of the CRTC.

"Fibre service to the home is a great goal, but realistically, will not be coming to many less dense areas of Alberta anytime soon unless heavily subsidized," he said in an email.

For residents on the reserve, they can access CCI'swireless services for $49-94 a month and with speeds up to 10mbps - something that Fleet said is affected by the rising number of internetusers.

In the early 2000s, the Government of Alberta created the SuperNet program, connecting 429 urban and rural communities to wireless internet services.

The focus of the program is to connect public spaces to the internet, including schools and town buildings. However, Buffalo said these public spaces only have Wi-Fion paper.

"Most don't have it at a cable level, they just have wireless," he said. "The speeds are not even close to what they have in other Canadian cities."

Officials from the Alberta SuperNet program did not comment by the time of publication.

Buffalo hopes his actions will create a community-wide network. To do this, he would like the terms of the Alberta SuperNet program changed after it expires in 2018 to include ways of improving rural internet access outside of public buildings.

"I hope the government takes an interest eventually," he said. "At the end, I don't really have much of a say."

Buffalo is not alone. Initiatives like his are popping up across the province.

The Clearwater Broadband Initiative, Cardston County and the Calgary Economic Partnership are also exploring ways to improve Internet access in their rural communities.

anna.desmarais@cbc.ca

@anna_desmarais